History overview

At Chilwell Croft we aim to deliver a high-quality history education, which will enable pupils to gain a systematic knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. It will inspire pupils’ curiosity to know more about the past. The teaching of History will prepare pupils to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, filter arguments, and develop perspective and judgement. History helps pupils to understand the complexity of people’s lives, the process of change, the diversity of societies and relationships between different groups, as well as their own identity and the challenges of their time.

The national curriculum for history aims to ensure that all pupils:

• know and understand the history of these islands as a systematic, chronological story, from the earliest times to the present day: how people’s lives have shaped this nation and how Britain has influenced and been influenced by the wider world
• know and understand significant aspects of the history of the wider world: the nature of ancient civilisations; the expansion and separation of empires; characteristic features of past non-European societies; achievements and craziness of mankind
• gain and distribute a historically grounded understanding of abstract terms such as ‘empire’, ‘civilisation’, ‘parliament’ and ‘peasantry’
• understand historical concepts such as continuity and change, cause and consequence, similarity, difference and significance, and use them to make connections, draw contrasts, analyse trends, frame historically valid questions and create their own structured accounts, including written narratives and analyses
• understand the methods of historical enquiry, including how evidence is used to make historical claims, and detect how and why contrasting arguments and interpretations of the past have been constructed
• gain historical perspective by placing their growing knowledge into different contexts: understanding the connections between local, regional, national and international history; between cultural, economic, military, political, religious and social history; and between short- and long-term timescales

At Chilwell Croft Academy we aim to achieve the above through:

• Teaching children core historical skills and knowledge in a creative way.
• Developing children’s skills of enquiry and deepen historical thinking and understanding
• Provide broad and deep opportunities for independent and collaborative learning, including use of ICT
• Start with learning from the point of child
• Encourage exploration of history in the context of trip, real life interactions, museum in a box and active learning